A Living Paradox
by Dizzy Dresden
Summary: Living a lie is hard. Convincing yourself to believe it, however, is harder. At least, for Yuffie it is.


Ever since Yuffie read the letter from Wutai, about her father's death and her obligation to her homeland, she's been living a lie and no one knows. No one knows, because she doesn't want them to worry, doesn't want them to freak out, doesn't want them to try to talk her out of it again. It's her duty, her responsibility, and she's gonna prove to them all that she's grown up and she can handle all her stupid responsibilities, just you wait and see.

She's a bundle of paradoxes, oxymorons, and juxtapositions and part of her is really starting to hate that.

White lies line her conversations with practiced ease, larger ones fashioned nightly and polished weekly, checked for cracks and inconsistencies frequently. Besides, as one trust ends, it only takes a while for another lie to begin. Like when she left Edge, saying that she'd be back soon, really meaning good-bye forever, sorry I can't stay.

Yuffie hated the looks on their faces when she left. They knew. They knew and wouldn't say anything. Not that she wanted them to, not really.

She's destroying herself, committing suicide from the outside in, as she fixes her make up for another one of Chekov's Princess Properness Lessons. On her way outside, she checks her face to see if it is disciplined into the mask she's forced to wear.

She glances into the mirror on her way out and flinches at the stranger gazing passively back to her. She touches the reflection, wonders briefly when she changed into this, and makes note to avoid any and all mirrors in the future.

They know too much and they don't lie about it.

Afterwards, she lays sprawled over her bed, watching the grey slowly come over the mountains in false morning, she remembers she was supposed to be sleeping. To be getting her much needed beauty sleep, as Staniv put it, so she would look like a respectable young lady instead of the crude and uncouth hellion she once was.

She couldn't sleep, though. She couldn't bear to face them and maybe even herself in her dreams that were steadily becoming constant nightmares and reminders of what might have been.

When the sun finally peaks over Da Chao, she realizes she has absolutely no idea who she is anymore.

It scares her enough to rouse her out of bed and she puts on her tea, burning herself on the teapot because she wasn't exactly paying attention. Chekov would have scolded her, sloshing the tea as she was, be she couldn't bring herself to care much about customs. She hardly acknowledges the burning as it goes down her throat, pushing the previous unsettled feeling and the accompanying thoughts to the back of her head because it is not who she is anymore.

Rulers are not scared, only detached.

It still bothers her through her lessons during the day.

As she signs the letter to Reeve, informing him of her resignation of her position as Head of Intelligence Gathering, her breath catches in her throat.

It catches on all of those times spent around the fire, drunken parties at the bar, sunsets watched in companionable silence, soft conversations between night watches, moments both given and stolen, and those horrible, wonderful, blood red, bleeding eyes that broke a little when she left, and she can't— she just can't—

She can't do this.

She won't.

Screw it all, screw what her dad had said, screw what was expected of her, screw being a prim and proper woman, and screw her obligation to her country, it is better off without her.

She just wants to be Yuffie, not _this_.

She shreds the note and smiles so hard it hurts when it burns, courtesy of her Fire materia.

Yuffie is still the Great Ninja Yuffie, and always will be, no matter what.

So she runs away from Wutai for the second time, but this time maybe for good, and rides the first Golden Chocobo that she can steal all the way into Edge.

And when Yuffie bursts into Seventh Heaven to the surprise and delight of all her friends, and they get hammered as nails until Tifa can't put up with them anymore and kicks them all out, and then Vincent carries home just like he always did, she decides there's no way she'd rather be.

And that's the truth.


End file.
